Recently, I’ve been consuming books* about race in the United States. The first of these, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, took me down an enlightening path. Although I was familiar with the legal cases, events, and history discussed, the book crystallized how they were connected. The
Our cherished “Land of the Free” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The term is not reality, even if it is a fantastic aspiration. Parts 1 & 2 Provide Context As I pointed out in Part 1, we imprison more people than literally any other country, even countries we consider downright evil. In
The United States of America is NOT the “Land of the Free”. If that hurts your feelings, I’m with you. In Part 1, I described in general terms the culmination of the “criminal justice” system in the United States of America. We are less free, in that sense, than any country in the world because
America is addicted. It is a non-stop compulsion. Lives are ruined by the millions. It marks people for life, if they can manage to escape. The drug? Incarceration. The United States of America incarcerates more people than any country in the world. Read that again. Yes, you read that right. Even “Oppressive” Countries Incarcerate Fewer
